Monday, June 9th, 2008 |
This post is about Estonia - a small, yet technologically advanced country where I run FinancialJesus.com from.
Background
Estonia is a very small country - about 1.3 million people live on 17 000 square miles (45000 sq km).
The largest city Tallinn has a population of about 400 000 - all other cities are smaller than 100 000 people.
Our better known neighbours include Finland to the north, Sweden to the west and Russia to the east.
Cool things about Estonia that you didn’t know
Let’s be honest - there is about a 99% chance that you don’t know anything about Estonia, but here is a list of things that make us unique and show just how advanced technologically we are.
E-government
From the year 2000 all Estonian government’s hearings are entirely paper free. The members of the government still have gatherings but all documents are held entirely online. If it is necessary to pass a new law it can be signed digitally.
ID-cards and Electronical signatures
All Estonians have an ID-card with a small chip that can be used to give electronic signatures. An Estonian can pretty much do every bureaucratic procedure online - this includes filing your taxes which is entirely web based and takes about 5 minutes. All relevant information is pre-entered into the tax forms - you just need to check if everything is OK.
E-democracy
Estonia is the first country in the world to have a unique system where every citizen can make suggestions for changing laws online. Other Estonians can vote if they like the suggestion and in the end the government has to consider carefully whether or not this suggestion can be implemented. You can basically change a law with one single post online.
Electronic voting
Estonia is the first country in the world to have successfully implemented national e-voting. A person wanting to give his vote to his favorite candidate online needs to have his ID-card that he uses to identify himself. A person can change his vote for as many times as he likes until the deadline.
Secure voting with mobile phones has already been used in smaller scale and there is a debate whether we should have mobile voting in addition to online voting.
Wireless Internet
Estonia is entirely covered with wireless internet. We have free wireless internet access in every gas station and in every cafe that hopes to have any visitors. In fact, it is very difficult to find a place where there is no free public wireless internet access! The many wireless networks that cover the whole country include 3G, 3.5G, WiMax and CDMA.
Estonia is the only country in the world where internet access is a basic human right. (Yes we have a law for that).
98% of people use online banking. Nobody uses checks.
Glimpse of World War 3
Being too wired can also have some negative aspects. In May 2007 Estonia became the first country in the world to become under a country wide cyber attack. The attack was headed from Russia with millions of computers around the world bombarding Estonian media, government and banking websites. Many of them become temporarily unavailable. Luckily for us - Estonia is the home of the cyber defense headquarters of NATO.
Mobile parking
Estonia was the first country to implement mobile parking tickets. You drive to the center of the city, park your car and dial a special number or send a text message. If you are done parking just call the number again. The money is taken directly from your bank account or added to your phone bill. If you are a fan of public transport you can of course buy a bus ticket with your phone or transfer money to your friends bank account just by dialing a special phone number. There are almost no regular parking meters.
Famous software
Estonia is also the birthplace for such famous software as Kazaa and Skype. The best days of the file sharing software Kazaa are already over, but the free internet based voice chat program Skype was sold to eBay for $4.1 billion.
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Posted in Evil Marketing | 8 Comments »
Monday, June 2nd, 2008 |
Here is an unbelievable true story from „The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read” by Daniel R. Solin.
One of my favorite stories was told by a man who had left work with a major brokerage firm. He told me about the training he had received a few years earlier when he started work with a major and well-respected brokerage firm. He and the other brokers in training were told to split their potential client list in half. They were told to call half and tell them to buy a particular stock. The other half were to receive calls telling them to sell the same stock.
In two weeks, these “financial advisor” trainees were told to see which way the stock had moved, up or down. Whichever way it had moved, half of the potential client list would think the trainee was pretty smart, to be able to pick a stock like that.
They were told to split the “successful” half of their group again, and do the same thing.
If they started with a call list of 120 potential clients and did this three times, they had 15 “warm leads” - people who had enough confidence in their ability to pick stocks and to become clients.
Unethical selling tactics by people who really don’t have a clue what’s going on is the reason I am taking care of my own stock portfolio - and you should too.
However I have to agree that this story gives a great example how everyone could start their own brokerage company without knowing anything about stocks! 
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Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 |
It is the second day that this blog is online and I already have 83 RSS subscribers!!! Woohhooo - life is looking beautiful baby!!!
How did I do it?
Well… I didn’t actually. It’s almost impossible to get such an amount of RSS subscribers with 2 days. So when I was unable to get my first 83 RSS subscribers I did the second best thing - I forged my RSS count.
Why did I do it?
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted to go to a bar to have a drink but all of your friends were going to the big party… You didn’t really want to go to the party but you still did - all your friends were there and it wouldn’t be any fun to be in the bar alone.
Well that’s exactly what I am doing here - letting all of your friends know that all of their friends are here - that way they will eventually end up here without any of them having an intention to be here in the first place. Good stuff, I know.
You are probably thinking - “It’s immoral!”.
No it’s not - says the Financial Jesus (and since I am Jesus you should always listen to what I say. I only hope all this Jesus talk won’t end up showing faith related ads 
)
But think about it - by being a little creative with the feed counter you will give more people a chance to be part of all the enlightening things you talk about in your blog.
If your RSS feed counter says that you only have 4 or 5 readers it shows that your blog is not worth to be read. This may actually be true when your writing skills and the content sucks but when you are starting a new blog it’s OK that you don’t have any visitors. But the underlying problem is that when people come to your new website they don’t know that it’s a new website - they want content and they want it now!
Don’t let people know that they are only readers
It’s OK to not have any readers when you start out - but it is not OK to let your readers know that they are the only readers.
In fact you should try to leave an impression that there is a lot that is going on (even if there isn’t).
People like to believe that they are ruled by their intellect but every day we see things that say People are Herd Animals - people are sheep.
If you see a large crowd gathering at the local mall you will go and check it out. After all - if there are so many people over there it must be worth to at least take a look!
By taking advantage of this mentality it’s a bit easier to get people to sign up for your RSS feed. After all - it’s free and if they don’t like it they can always unsubscribe.
If you are just starting out and are in search of new readers - go ahead and forge the number of people reading your RSS feed.
Is it such a bad thing when you do something a little immoral to get people on the right track?
I call it Evil Marketing at it’s best!
By the way, if you liked this post, subscribe to my full feed RSS. I already have 83 people signed up, you can be number 84
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